cahn

The Saint of Bright Doors (Vajra Chandrasekera)

Fetter, raised as a child to kill his father, escapes his rural cult upbringing to live in the big city... but his past haunts him in more ways than one.

...I feel like that is a terrible way of describing this book. Perhaps if I say: it has the sensibility to me of a magical realism book, set in a world that has a lot in common with ours (email! committees!) but is not quite ours (devils, the mysterious bright doors of the title), or perhaps is not yet ours -- is that any better a description? Maybe not. Anyway, I thought it was trying to play with some interesting ideas and themes and I like seeing that kind of thing in the Hugos. On the other hand, I kept putting it down and not feeling any kind of impetus whatsoever to pick it up again. I felt rather as if there were short bursts of Important Plot Things Being Revealed interspersed with long passages where maybe something happened but it was not compelling or entirely comprehensible (sometimes because it was waiting for the next flash of lightning of Plot Things Being Revealed). Even something like 85% through (at which point you usually don't get any sense out of me until I finish the entire book), I ignored it for an entire day and on seeing my Kindle the next day was like, "oh, right, I haven't finished that book yet." Which I feel speaks to some fundamental problem with being able to sustain being compelling, or at least being compelling to me (it could well be a me problem).

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Shannon Chakraborty)

The title is basically what it's about, the adventures of the formerly-ex-pirate Amina al-Sirafi. She is hired/blackmailed into looking for her ex-crew-member's daughter, who studies the occult and may be mixed up in helping a Frank [European] get access to a powerful magical artifact. She starts gathering her old crew to help her in her quest, and they all start having adventures...

I liked it, it was easy to read, and I totally appreciated that the main character was a middle-aged mom (and most of the supporting characters were middle-aged as well, for that matter). I also appreciated its taking place in the Muslim world, and occasionally had a rather embarrassing epiphany, like realizing that I'd actually never really thought about the Crusades from the Muslim viewpoint. I don't think this was meant to be a super profound book and I think that's OK; sometimes you want a rollicking adventure that makes you think differently about some things, and this fit that well.